Court Allows Mom to Euthanize Severely Disabled Daughter, 12 (Video)

U.K. Justice Eleanor King ruled in August that Charlotte Fitzmauric could discontinue life-sustaining hydration and nutrition for her daughter Nancy, who was 12.

Nancy, who was expected to die by age 4, was born blind with meningitis, septicemia and hydrocephalus (video below).

Nancy could not walk or talk and required 24-hour hospital care. She was fed and medicated via tubes.

"My daughter is no longer my daughter, she is now merely just a shell. The light from her eyes is now gone and is replaced with fear and a longing to be at peace," Fitzmauric told Judge King in a written statement, noted The Mirror.

Fitzmauric claimed that her daughter's developmental age was equal to a six-month-old infant.

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While Nancy was not terminally ill, she suffered a post-surgical infection in 2012 that caused her to scream in agony for hours every day, according to her mother.

Nancy was given painkillers such as morphine and ketamine, but was still suffering. Her doctors in London supported Fitzmauric’s wish to end her daughter’s life.

However, Nancy was not terminally ill or on life-support for breathing, which is normally required for euthanasia in the U.K.

She passed away 14 days after being removed from her feeding tubes.

Fitzmauric recently came forward with her daughter's story because she wants other parents to be allowed to make this decision with doctors without going to court.

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“In pediatrics, young children have never been competent to make medical decisions,” Steven Joffe, associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, told The Daily Beast.

"The judge's statement sets a precedent that quality of life now becomes a measuring rod as to whether or not a child with a disability should live or die," Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic and conservative Christian activist, told The Christian Post. "That's horrific. That's terrifying. In the future, I wonder how many other subjective issues may sway another judge's opinion in the life of somebody like Nancy, or perhaps even less disabled physically and mentally than Nancy."